YouGov: How important do you think political blogs are?

I have been away for a few days visiting our Capital City, so sorry for lack of posts, responses and other things expected of me!

Apart from not doing blogging I haven't done any YouGov surveys this week either so my views aren't included in these results. However whilst trawling through my e-mails I read the results from last Friday's (I think) YouGov daily survey and thought that it might be of interest to fellow bloggers:

How often do you read political blogs?
Not at all 40%
Rarely 34.3%
Occasionally 21%
Frequently 2.7%
Regularly 1.3%

How important do you think political blogs are?

To you and you family
Very important 1.4%
Important 5%
Neither 10.1%
Not very important 17.1%
Not important at all 55.1%

To politics
Very important 3.6%
Important 20.2%
Neither 13.2%
Not very important 15.5%
Not important at all 32.3%

To democracy
Very important 6.8%
Important 18.3%
Neither 12.8%
Not very important 13.6%
Not important at all 33.9%

To the UK
Very important 3.6%
Important 14.3%
Neither 16.4%
Not very important 16%
Not important at all 35.2%

To the internet
Very important 5.2%
Important 21.2%
Neither 14.8%
Not very important 13.1%
Not important at all 31.5%

To the bloggers themselves
Very important 34%
Important 23.3%
Neither 6.3%
Not very important 3.5%
Not important at all 19.9%

YouGov is probably the most reliable of pollster, but it's polls are all conducted on-line. Usually, this doesn't matter - because a wide enough section of the general population uses the internet and is confident enough in its use of on-line facilities to ensure a fair cross section. But when the questions, such as this one, involve internet services, one suspects that YouGov's results might have a certain bias.

A poll of confident internet users that says that only 1.3% of them bother to read political blogs regularly, and fewer than 6.5% think that political blogs are of any importance to the political process, is very disappointing. If a similar poll that included people without internet access or who have little confidence in the service was conducted the lack of relevance of poliblogs would be even greater.

On the other hand, of course, the fact that I blog, and my sister (who's opinions are as relevant as mine) doesn't, shouldn't mean that my opinions are more worthy or influential than hers - so it may be a sign of a more mature democracy on these islands that we don't give blogs quite as much credence as they seem to have in other Western democracies!

If you would like to join YouGov so that your opinions on questions such as this can be counted click here